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Running
Fred Rohé
Rohé, Fred
The Zen of Running
1. Jogging. I. Title
GV494.R56 128.2 74-20924
ISBN 0-394-49611-6
ISBN 0-394-73038-0 pbk.
you see ,
its quite a relative and individual thing ,
this distance question .
how old are you ?
how long are your legs ?
how much do you weigh ?
what imaginary distance
do you feel comfortable with ?
since individual idiosyncracies
make it impossible to generalize safely
about distance
its really a matter of time .
how far do your legs
take you in, say,
five or fifty minutes ?
you should run far enough
to make yourself feel dandy
and if you dont
youve probably run
too far .
you might ask
How fast should I run ?
(but of course
you are living
your life .
so if you want
to run against the clock
remember that this is your game --
you decide what rules
you want to play by .)
you might ask
How often should I run ?
after a while
running regularly
will feel so much better
than not
that you will just naturally run regularly
according to what feels good
to you
and that will be
often enough .
people ask me
What should a runner eat ?
running erectly --
shoulders, chest,
abdomen, hips,
in one plumb line --
your legs lift easily ,
knees thrusting up
and forward
freely .
The troubles with the other books
Ive seen about running
are two :
and 2. by making it
a mechanical practice
the spirit is missing --
there is no fun !
my friend Reps says
unless its fun
better left undone.
I took it slowly
easily making my run longer
little by little getting stronger
until one day I felt so free
it no longer seemed to be me
but rather he
and he had earned this strength
that feels like lightness
and turned his short run
into a long one
then turned his long run
into the rightness
of this dancing ---
experiencing the run as dance
requires some special attention .
in the running
in the run
--- now ---
why not start
now ?
just before beginning to write this line,
I took my pulse .
my heart beat 48 times in one minute .
I observe this body I live in
and see that it is lean and strong,
the eyes are clear, the skin glows .
the running is obviously a wonderful tonic
for this body .
and what is good for the body
is good for the whole man .
our spirit is not separate from our body
any more than the water is separate from the stream .
the water is the stream .
a certain lady whom I love,
and for whom I have an immense amount of respect,
read what I have written
and said that it is beautiful .
but, she said, there is something missing .
do you really mean, she asked,
that it is always joyful, always fun ?
no, it is not .
what do I do when I dont feel like running,
when I feel more like just lying around ?
sometimes I do that, I just lie around .
and see that about myself .
but then, sometimes I push myself out there to run
even tho the predominant feeling is ,
I dont want to .
and see that about myself.
because there is more than one side
to this group I call myself.
there is no single permanent I
rather there are many.
one I wants to quit .
usually I keep on running
because its a faster way to get back
to where I started from . anyway, the I that
wanted to run will appear again soon .
in speaking of my self, I say I or me
or myself, obscuring the fact that I am
not one but many .
there is a truly significant side of me that
loves to run, but I have not run for weeks at a
time, said yes to other sides .
my aim in life is not to run
but to awaken .
CONSCIOUSNESS requires SEEING --
begins with opening to what you are .
sure, people are lazy .
me too .
I try hard
to see myself clearly
and clear as can be
theres the lazy side of me .
most often, then,
I simply choose not
to feed the lazy side of me .
the device I use to get around him
is discipline .
discipline is one more aspect
of our running yoga .
(yes, its a yoga too,
and yoga always requires discipline .)
but the lazy side of you
is not exactly the same as
the lazy side of me .
so your discipline
is your responsibility to invent .
dont be afraid of it ;
discipline is good for us too .
all that I wrote about running is my truth,
is from an important side of my self,
came from the desire to give of my self .
running is not all ecstasy, all positive .
sometimes running is suffering intentionally
for the sake of seeing, sometimes running is
resisting and suffering unintentionally because
we are human beings .
lets not make our running a fantasy,
lets let our running be real .
I sit here recalling a run of a few days ago .
I remember that I wanted to capture this
essence with these words ---
I am running
free and easy,
my breath rolling in,
pouring out,
entirely present
in the now of this experience,
mind
still .
as I run
I can feel my face
beaming ecstatically.
so may you .
if you like,
drop me a line
telling me
whats true for you .